EU freezes €18 million in aid to Sierra Leone over Dutch cocaine lord

The European Commission on 1 October 2026 froze the remainder of its €18 million budget-support package to Sierra Leone for 2026 — and signalled that a further €20.5 million planned for 2027 could also be withheld — over Freetown's refusal to extradite Dutch cocaine trafficker Jos Leijdekkers, nicknamed 'Bolle Jos'. The decision was confirmed by Dutch Justice Minister David van Weel. Leijdekkers, sentenced to about 80 years in combined Dutch and Belgian courts for industrial-scale drug trafficking, has been living in Sierra Leone for years and is reported to have close personal ties to President Julius Maada Bio's family. The frozen tranche is part of a €325 million EU grant programme to Sierra Leone covering 2021-2027. The Netherlands had pressed Brussels for months to use aid conditionality to force Freetown's hand. Sierra Leone's information minister disputed the EU's reasoning, calling the delay 'procedural', but opposition politicians and civil-society figures warned that the president's apparent protection of a convicted narcotics kingpin now threatened the country's fragile post-pandemic economy.